Voyageurs and Highlanders Finish with Playoff Intensity

Our final game of Monday night was the Highlanders who gave up a late lead in game 1, vs the Voyageurs who fell to the Starrs 4-2 in their opening matchup.

Before the game started, you knew that you were in for a good one just by looking at Andrew Lowery’s Chris Osgood stile red helmet, which pairs perfectly with his brown pads and the Voyageurs vintage style jerseys.

The expected goals were lower than expected as the goalies were stopping everything for the first ten minutes of the game.  Nothing too fancy, just solid play.  The Voyageurs were in a bit of early penalty trouble though as they took the first 4 penalties of the game, all different culprits too.  It was a Derick Levesque holding call that got the game going.

30 seconds into their penalty kill, Shannon Farrell got the puck out of her zone and flew up the ice on the breakaway.  She placed her shot perfectly into the top corner of the net, beating Logan MacLean’s glove.  Then, on the same power play, Tyler “Pickles” Wotton picked up a clearing attempt by the Voyagers and threw a seeing eye shot on goal that hit the back of the net to make it 1-1.  Pickles is usually good for a goal a season, so this pace could see him set some personal bests if he can keep it up.

The second period had the scoring start much earlier.  Just off the bench was Matt Anderson when he got the puck and skated up the middle, shooting in motion, his heavy wrister hit the back bar of the net to put the Voyageurs up by a goal 2 minutes into the period.

A couple minutes after the Anderson marker, rookie forward Josh Beitel put home a rebound along the ice to make it 3-1 for the Voyageurs.  It wasn’t much later that the game started to get chippy.  I’m hesitant to say that this is what started the action, but it definitely exacerbated the tensions.  Mya Ferguson stepped up at the blueline to make a play on the puck with Bo Lowery coming full speed in her direction.  Bo got the puck and tried to step around Mya, but they both stepped the same direction and Mya got levelled.  From then on, the plays were all made a little harder, and a lot of…let’s call it bullshit followed.  

It culminated with Brock Bethune and Matt Anderson and Jeff Miles.  Cages were grabbed, Brock’s helmet came off, and he a 10 with less than a minute left, so basically got tossed, and in his 100th Nomad Hockey League game, Matt Anderson was also shown the door.

You would think this was the end of the game right? Wrong.  About 10 seconds after that kerfuffle, Kyle Gouthro got hauled down and a penalty shot was awarded.  He made the deke and put the puck upstairs over the glove of an outstretched Andrew Lowery to bring the score within 1.

The Highlanders pulled Logan and tried to come back but just weren’t having it and the Highlanders fell to the Voyageurs 3-2.  The Highlanders will face the Wolfpack at 7:15 tomorrow evening and the Voyageurs have the Sable at 9:15